Executive Director | Design Leadership | GCC Mega-Projects

Bharath Magadi

I lead design delivery on hospitality, workplace and mega-scale developments in Qatar and the GCC — taking visionary briefs to buildable, operator-approved outcomes while adopting new technology, AI and simpler design processes.

25+ years, mostly in Qatar
DEVELOPMENT FOCUSED, DESIGN LEADER & GUARDIAN, GROWTH
TECHNOLOGY, PROJECT CONTROLS & DELIVERY, LFA

Clients, operators & developers

AL-FUTTAIM
QatarEnergy
QATAR RAILالريل
QATAR AIRWAYS
ALILAby Hyatt
Hilton
IHGHotels & Resorts
ZULALWellness Resort
QATAR FOUNDATION
MSHEIREBProperties
ISA SPORTS CITYBahrain
RAMOJIFilm City
SeaWorld
QATAR TOURISM
EsselWorld
DREAM WORLD
AL SHAQABEquestrian
BARWA

Selected impact

692,000sqm

QatarEnergy HQ, Qatar Petroleum District

Built-up area under design direction, with a 240,000 sqm fit-out across 10 office towers — one repurposed from a hotel. GSAS 3-star certified.

574,000sqm

Doha Festival City Mall

~550 retail units on a 433,846 sqm plot. Design lead across all disciplines for 12+ years, including live tenant change management. GSAS 3-star.

USDBillion+

Doha Festival City, QatarEnergy HQ, Al Shaqab Equestrain

Retail, workplace and equine mega-scale developments in Qatar and the GCC.

2x fee

Doha Festival City, QatarEenrgy HQ, Alila Hinu Bay, Qatar Tourism Desert Retreats

Driving revenue growth through effective change control, client management and high quality delivery

10 towers 240 floors 01 project

Workplace portfolio, QatarEnergy

~240 floors of interiors plus command centres and a new trading hub for ~400 traders, integrated into the live campus.

25+years

Design leadership, MEA markets

Qatar, Bahrain, Oman, India, HK — architecture, hospitality, workplace, healthcare, master planning and themed entertainment.

Case studies

Three projects where the difficulty was the point: a remote coast, a landmark asset under a world-renowned designer, and an occupied national headquarters that never stopped operating.

Hospitality / Operator-branded resort

Alila Hinu Bay

Mirbat, Salalah, Oman

Redesigning a 111-key Alila resort around an excavated site, a fixed budget and a fee incentive tied to cost performance

111

Keys

19,000 sqm

Built-up area

Read the breakdown

Circular stone courtyard with a central pool at Zulal Wellness Resort, Qatar

Hospitality / Wellness resort transformation

Zulal Wellness Resort by Chiva-Som

Northern Qatar

Reimagining the public realm of a 180-key wellness resort with Axel Vervoordt — while the resort remained fully fitted out

180

Keys

26,000 sqm

GFA

Read the breakdown

Lobby corridor interior at QatarEnergy headquarters, Doha, with backlit stone screens

Workplace / National institutional client

QatarEnergy HQ & Trading Hub

Qatar Petroleum District, Doha

240,000 sqm of workplace interiors reinterpreted, value-engineered and delivered in phased packages

692,000 sqm

Built-up area

240,000 sqm

Fit-out area

Read the breakdown

Also on the books

Doha Festival City Mall

574,000 sqm, ~550 retail units, GSAS 3-star

Twelve years as design lead across all disciplines on Qatar’s largest retail development, including the family entertainment assets — Angry Birds World, Virtuocity and Snow Dunes — and continuous tenant change management on a trading mall.

Experience

Arab Engineering Bureau (AEB)Qatar

2014 – Present (Executive Director since 2019)

Executive Director / Studio Director / Project Director – Pre-Contract Services

Own strategic oversight and fiscal performance of key project accounts, acting as the business's senior representative on major client relationships while developing new contacts and mentoring design partners and service providers.
Directed design for Alila Hinu Bay (Hyatt, Oman), Zulal Wellness Resort with Axel Vervoordt, and Qatar Tourism's desert retreats — Our Habitas Ras Abrouq (48 keys) and Hilton Tapestry Fuwairit Kite Beach (32 keys).
12+ years of design and delivery on Doha Festival City, including the FEC assets — Angry Birds World, Virtuocity and Snow Dunes.
Initiated reality 360-degree capture on QatarEnergy HQ; its success became the foundation for AEB's 3DS service, and I am now building a facility-management consulting division alongside stakeholders.
Carry design risk and governance through senior forums up to C-suite and Ministers, converting open issues into recorded decisions.

Leigh & Orange Architects (L&O)Qatar, Bahrain & Hong Kong

2008 – 2014

Lead Architect / Senior Project Architect – Design & Construction

Principal Architect for L&O Qatar: concept design, EOI responses, client liaison and studio operations.
Site-based Resident/Project Architect through construction on Isa Sports City, Bahrain and MPAC for QatarEnergy.
Design guardian during construction on the award-winning Al Shaqab Equestrian Performance Arena (350 m long, 34 m tall) — Hong Kong Quality Build Award and HKIE Structural Excellence commendation, 2012.

Aref Sadeq Design ConsultantsBahrain

2004 – 2008

Architect / Design lead

Full project lifecycle delivery — concept to close-out — across hospitality, healthcare and commercial work.

Sanderson GroupIndia & Australia

1998 – 2004

Theme design & project delivery

Led theme design documentation and site supervision for Ramoji Film City's Movie Magic park, plus Sammy's Dreamland (Forrec), Essel World, Dreamworld and Sea World.
Worked on site with thematic construction specialists: show control, animatronics, shotcrete rockwork, PU foam and hardcoat, GFRC.

How I run difficult delivery

Diagnose before you draw

On existing assets I verify conditions first — survey, scan, measured reality — because record drawings are where late variations are born. On new briefs I test the brief against the operator's standards and the site's real constraints before any design effort is spent.

Governance that produces decisions

Stage gates, a single decision log and named owners. Senior forums up to C-suite and Ministerial level exist to close issues, not to review them again. If a decision is not recorded, it has not been made.

Design to budget, deliberately

Value engineering is scored against guest experience and brand standard before cost. Savings get taken where nobody sees them and refused where they would trigger operator rejection and rework — which is the expensive kind of saving.

Own the interfaces

Most delivery failure lives between disciplines and between contracts. I run interface and coordination management across architecture, interiors, services and landscape, and hold design guardianship through construction so substitutions are arbitrated rather than accumulated.

Operator and authority in the room early

Brand standards, FF&E/OS&E and permitting are programme risks, not paperwork. Bringing operator technical services and authorities in at the right stage keeps the design programme off the critical path.

Commercial ownership, not commercial awareness

P&L responsibility for project accounts: scope, fee, change and margin. Change is captured and priced as it happens, never reconciled at the end.

Adopt technology, then simplify the process

I actively trial and embed new tools — from reality capture and AI-assisted workflows to leaner documentation methods — but only where they remove friction for the team or improve decision quality. The goal is a simpler, faster design process, not more software.

Skills & tools

Design management & delivery

Concept to construction
Pre-contract leadership
Design guardianship
Stage governance
Scope, programme & approvals

Hospitality & operator focus

Luxury resort & spa design
Hotel brand standards
Guest experience & touchpoints
FF&E / OS&E coordination
Mock-up coordination

Theme parks & FEC

Storyboarding
Thematic construction
Show control systems
Animatronics
Shotcrete rockwork, PU foam & hardcoat, GFRC

Multi-disciplinary leadership

Large consultant team direction
Interface & coordination management
Risk & governance leadership
Change management

Commercial & stakeholder

Design to budget
P&L & commercial administration
Client & operator relationships
Executive & Ministerial presentations

Sustainability, tools & platforms

Living Future Accredited (LFA)
GSAS delivery
Revit, AutoCAD, Adobe CS
BIM coordination
Aconex, BIM 360, PDMS, BIW

Education & memberships

Bachelor of Architecture, Bangalore University (RVCE), India — 1993–1999
Committee of Engineers, Qatar — Grade A (active)
International Living Future Institute — Living Future Accredited (LFA), active

About

I trained as an architect in Bangalore and have spent most of the last 25 years in the Gulf, first in Bahrain and then in Qatar, where I have lived and worked since 2008. My early years were in themed entertainment — building movie parks in India and Australia, on site with the rockwork and animatronics crews — which is an unusual apprenticeship for a design director and a useful one: you learn quickly that an idea is only worth what someone can actually build.

Since then the work has scaled: a 574,000 sqm mall, ten headquarters towers, luxury resorts for Hyatt, Hilton and Chiva-Som, and desert retreats on environmentally sensitive sites. As Executive Director at AEB I carry both the design and the account — the quality and the numbers.

Today I am as focused on relationships and process as I am on design: developing new contacts, mentoring current partners and service providers, and adopting new technology and AI to simplify how we work. AEB's 3DS service grew directly out of a reality 360-degree capture initiative I led on QatarEnergy HQ, and I am now building a facility-management consulting division within the practice.

I do my best work where the brief is ambitious, the constraints are real and someone senior needs a straight answer about what is deliverable. I am Living Future Accredited and I argue for regenerative design on commercial grounds, because that is the argument that wins.

Contact

For collaborations, design leadership on a complex asset, an advisory conversation or a programme that is not going the way it was drawn — send me the short version and I’ll give you a straight view of what is deliverable.